Please select one of the following works for your Independent Reading Project:
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Global Studies 9/10 Topic: Chinese Culture
Format: Novel
Pages: 352
Summary: Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. (From Amazon.com)
The Bhagavad Gita
Global 9/10 Topic: Indian Culture
Format: Novel (Mythology)
Pages: 296
Summary: Prince Arjuna faced a dilemma that many face sooner or later--whether to take action that is necessary yet morally ambiguous. The difference is that Arjuna's action was to wage war against his own family. With the armies arrayed, Arjuna loses his nerve. Krishna, his charioteer and incarnation of divine consciousness, begins to teach him the nature of God and of himself, that Arjuna can attain liberation through union with God, and that there are several available paths. And so the most famous and revered of all Hindu Scriptures goes on to teach the paths of knowledge, devotion, action, and meditation, becoming the seed for all the Hindu systems of philosophy and religion that followed. For all of its profundity, Eknath Easwaran manages to translate the Gita in easy prose that neither panders nor obscures. Coupled with his thorough introduction, Easwaran's version comes off on all the levels it should: as a guide to action, devotional Scripture, a philosophical text, and inspirational reading. So what does Arjuna finally do? He follows his dharma, of course, as we all must.
Antigone by Sophocles
Global 9/10 Topic: Ancient Greece
Format: Play
Pages: 80
Summary: This play is part of the trilogy Oedipus Rex. In Antigone, the curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles’ classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother. Determined but doomed, Antigone shows her inner strength throughout the play. Antigone raises issues of law and morality that are just as relevant today as they were more than two thousand years ago. Whether this is your first reading or your twentieth, Antigone will move you as few pieces of literature can. (From Amazon.com)
The Aeneid by Virgil
Global 9/10 Topic: Ancient Rome
Format: Epic Poem
Pages: 442
Summary: Arma virumque cano: "I sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless sentences full of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a helpful translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful, accessible American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire. Its pages sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to be a citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across the centuries, and remains essential reading. (From Amazon.com)
Cry, The Beloved Countryby Alan Paton
Global 9/10 Topic: African Culture
Format: Novel
Pages: 320
Summary: An immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.
_ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by AnnonymousGlobal 9/10 Topic: Middle Ages
Format: Epic Poem
Pages: 160
Summary: This 14th Century poem is one of the earliest known works in English. Its provenance is a mystery because literally nothing is known of the poet. It is written in a unique dialect of Middle English and is pretty much unread in the original. This verse translation by Burton Raffel is terrific and does much to elevate the work to the level of Beowulf & Chaucer.
At Christmas time, a Green Knight enters Camelot and challenges any Knight of the Roundtable to smite him with one blow of a battle axe. The only catch is that one year hence the smiter must receive a similar blow from the Green Knight. Sir Gawain volunteers for this strange duty. He beheads the Green Knight who thereupon picks up his laughing head and reminds Gawain of his obligation & tells him to find him in exactly one year to receive the blow.
The enchanting adventure leading up to and inculding their subsequent confrontation is beautifully rendered by Raffel. The poem is exciting, humorous & deals with great themes: courage, honor, etc.
_
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Global 9/10 Topic: Renaissance
Format: Play
Pages: 96
Summary: If you make a deal with the Devil, are you then damned for all eternity? This is the situation Doctor Faustus must face when his ambitions as a scholar and magician take an ominous turn. Having sold his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, can Faustus repent and be saved-or is it too late? This play, critically acclaimed as Christopher Marlowe's greatest work, boldly and imaginatively explores the age-old question: "What profits a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul?" Marlowe gives life to this concept in Faustus-a single man in whom Heaven and Hell do battle. Using both broad humor and deadly seriousness in this daring work, Marlowe addresses the essence of the human soul. Investigating the liability of knowledge, the interplay of free will and fate, and the perversion of power, Faustus's story has as much relevance to us today as it did to audiences in the sixteenth century.
_
Fast Ships, Black Sails by Ann VanderMeer
Global 9/10 Topic: Age of Exploration
Format: Short Stories Collection
Pages: 272
Summary: While this may not be the first pirate story anthology, Fast Ships, Black Sails doesn't hold back, with its captivating cover featuring a classic pirate standing proud at the prow of his ship, while small glowing-eye dragons fly around, a tiny dragon skeleton sits on his shoulder, and in the cloudy distance is what appears to be a ghost pirate ship. This collection edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer features a combination of classic swashbuckling pirate tales, as well as fascinating stories of the fantastic from authors like Conrad Williams, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear, and many more.
In the opening story, "Boojum" from Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette - possibly the best in the collection - we are in space, and the mighty spaceships are living entities that grow and change and have mouths; they are biomechanical. The authors do an excellent job of creating an interesting world that leaves the reader wanting more. In Naomi Novik's -- author of the successful Temeraire series - "Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake," the daughter of a very important noble is kidnapped by pirates and thought murdered, but Araminta is a special woman with some unique powers allowing her to outwit the pirates who have taken her hostage. In Michael Moorcock's too short story "Ironface," there are pirates in space and Ironface is the most feared in the solar system, who makes the trip to Venus to accept the expensive bribe that he collects each decade, then his ship, Pain, floats back out into the dark realms of space.
Fast Ships, Black Sails has the perfect pirate story for any reader, as it presents both the classic and the unusual stories of privateers and buccaneers sailing the high seas, as well as the dark matter clouds of the cosmos. (From Amazon.com)
Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin
Global 9/10 Topic: The Enlightenment
Format: Collection of Proverbs
Pages: 144
Summary: Benjamin Franklin’s classic book is full of timeless, thought-provoking insights that are as valuable today as they were over two centuries ago. With more than 700 pithy proverbs, Franklin lays out the rules everyone should live by and offers advice on such subjects as money, friendship, marriage, ethics, and human nature. They range from the famous “A penny saved is a penny earned” to the lesser-known but equally practical “When the wine enters, out goes the truth.” Other truisms like “Fish and visitors stink after three days” combine sharp wit with wisdom. Paul Volcker’s new introduction offers a fascinating perspective on Franklin’s beloved work.
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Global 9/10 Topic: The French Revolution
Format: Novel
Pages: 270
Summary: The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic novel, though it is hard to categorize. It is part romance, part adventure, part spy thriller, and part superhero fiction. All of these elements went into the pot and the resulting stew is extremely entertaining.
The book follows the adventures of Sir Percy Blakeney as he seeks to help French aristocrats escape the guillotine during the French Revolution. Since official English policy forbids this, Blakeney adopts a masked identity as the Scarlet Pimpernel to remain anonymous. The French, of course, detest this interference in their affairs and set out to trap and kill the Pimpernel at all costs. As part of his effort to deflect suspicion from himself, he plays the fool in every day life and he does it well. His own wife considers him a useless fop... and that's where the story really gets interesting. (From Amazon.com)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Global 9/10 Topic: Industrialization
Format: Novel
Pages: 480
Summary: Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is one of the handful of books throughout all of history, perhaps, that have encapsulated the crying voices of the oppressed. While many readers and politicians at the time of its publication (and since) have focused on the intolerable conditions in which American food products were produced, the major thrust in "The Jungle" is not in regards to the ill-treatment of our food; it is in regards to the ill-treatment of our workers.
The repeated sufferings of Jurgis and his family are akin to an overwhelming symphony of sorrowful songs. As his family is driven deeper into debt, his body worn down, and his life's zeal and love slowly strangled, Jurgis' desperation becomes palpable, and if you can't sympathize with his feelings at the loss of his family's home--a structure they worked so hard for--check your pulse. You might be dead.
The book contains some of the most horrific depictions in all of literature, including a mercifully oblique reference to a child's death by being eaten alive by rats. Although the novel focuses on Jurgis primarily, it is the children--the laboring little people--who elicit the most sympathy in this reader's view. Struggling to support their family, escaping extremely dangerous situations (one little girl is nearly dragged into an alley and raped), sleeping on the street, and begging desperately for food--the appalling conditions being visited upon children as described in "The Jungle" still have the power to arouse strong anger and outrage, over a century after its initial publication.
One of the greatest social novels ever written, "The Jungle" is a moving tribute to the millions of immigrants who did come here legally, who did find jobs, who were ready to work for their slice of the American Dream, and who survived (barely) despite being swindled, stolen from, lied to, oppressed, turned out, ignored, and abused, almost from the very first step they took into the United States. The recent punditry over immigration that has dominated the national debate should serve as a reminder of the timelessness exhibited in Upton Sinclair's seminal masterpiece. (From Amazon.com)
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Global 9/10 Topic: WWII/Human Rights
Format: Graphic Novel
Pages: 160
Summary: Told with chilling realism in an unusual comic-book format, this is more than a tale of surviving the Holocaust. Spiegelman relates the effect of those events on the survivors' later years and upon the lives of the following generation. Each scene opens at the elder Spiegelman's home in Rego Park, N.Y. Art, who was born after the war, is visiting his father, Vladek, to record his experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Nazis, portrayed as cats, gradually introduce increasingly repressive measures, until the Jews, drawn as mice, are systematically hunted and herded toward the Final Solution. Vladek saves himself and his wife by a combination of luck and wits, all the time enduring the torment of hunted outcast. The other theme of this book is Art's troubled adjustment to life as he, too, bears the burden of his parents' experiences. This is a complex book. It relates events which young adults, as the future architects of society, must confront, and their interest is sure to be caught by the skillful graphics and suspenseful unfolding of the story. (From Amazon.com)
__
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Global 9/10 Topic: Human Rights
Format: Graphic Novel
Pages: 160
Summary: Adult/High School-Marji tells of her life in Iran from the age of 10, when the Islamic revolution of 1979 reintroduced a religious state, through the age of 14 when the Iran-Iraq war forced her parents to send her to Europe for safety. This story, told in graphic format with simple, but expressive, black-and-white illustrations, combines the normal rebelliousness of an intelligent adolescent with the horrors of war and totalitarianism. Marji's parents, especially her freethinking mother, modeled a strong belief in freedom and equality, while her French education gave her a strong faith in God. Her Marxist-inclined family initially favored the overthrow of the Shah, but soon realized that the new regime was more restrictive and unfair than the last. The girl's independence, which made her parents both proud and fearful, caused them to send her to Austria. With bold lines and deceptively uncomplicated scenes, Satrapi conveys her story. From it, teens will learn much of the history of this important area and will identify with young Marji and her friends. This is a graphic novel of immense power and importance for Westerners of all ages. (From Amazon.com)
Book Selection:
Please select one of the following works for your Independent Reading Project:
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Global Studies 9/10 Topic: Chinese Culture
Format: Novel
Pages: 352
Summary: Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. (From Amazon.com)
The Bhagavad Gita
Global 9/10 Topic: Indian Culture
Format: Novel (Mythology)
Pages: 296
Summary: Prince Arjuna faced a dilemma that many face sooner or later--whether to take action that is necessary yet morally ambiguous. The difference is that Arjuna's action was to wage war against his own family. With the armies arrayed, Arjuna loses his nerve. Krishna, his charioteer and incarnation of divine consciousness, begins to teach him the nature of God and of himself, that Arjuna can attain liberation through union with God, and that there are several available paths. And so the most famous and revered of all Hindu Scriptures goes on to teach the paths of knowledge, devotion, action, and meditation, becoming the seed for all the Hindu systems of philosophy and religion that followed. For all of its profundity, Eknath Easwaran manages to translate the Gita in easy prose that neither panders nor obscures. Coupled with his thorough introduction, Easwaran's version comes off on all the levels it should: as a guide to action, devotional Scripture, a philosophical text, and inspirational reading. So what does Arjuna finally do? He follows his dharma, of course, as we all must.
Antigone by Sophocles
Global 9/10 Topic: Ancient Greece
Format: Play
Pages: 80
Summary: This play is part of the trilogy Oedipus Rex. In Antigone, the curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles’ classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother. Determined but doomed, Antigone shows her inner strength throughout the play. Antigone raises issues of law and morality that are just as relevant today as they were more than two thousand years ago. Whether this is your first reading or your twentieth, Antigone will move you as few pieces of literature can. (From Amazon.com)
The Aeneid by Virgil
Global 9/10 Topic: Ancient Rome
Format: Epic Poem
Pages: 442
Summary: Arma virumque cano: "I sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless sentences full of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a helpful translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful, accessible American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire. Its pages sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to be a citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across the centuries, and remains essential reading. (From Amazon.com)
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Global 9/10 Topic: African Culture
Format: Novel
Pages: 320
Summary: An immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by AnnonymousGlobal 9/10 Topic: Middle Ages
Format: Epic Poem
Pages: 160
Summary: This 14th Century poem is one of the earliest known works in English. Its provenance is a mystery because literally nothing is known of the poet. It is written in a unique dialect of Middle English and is pretty much unread in the original. This verse translation by Burton Raffel is terrific and does much to elevate the work to the level of Beowulf & Chaucer.
At Christmas time, a Green Knight enters Camelot and challenges any Knight of the Roundtable to smite him with one blow of a battle axe. The only catch is that one year hence the smiter must receive a similar blow from the Green Knight. Sir Gawain volunteers for this strange duty. He beheads the Green Knight who thereupon picks up his laughing head and reminds Gawain of his obligation & tells him to find him in exactly one year to receive the blow.
The enchanting adventure leading up to and inculding their subsequent confrontation is beautifully rendered by Raffel. The poem is exciting, humorous & deals with great themes: courage, honor, etc.
_
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Global 9/10 Topic: Renaissance
Format: Play
Pages: 96
Summary: If you make a deal with the Devil, are you then damned for all eternity? This is the situation Doctor Faustus must face when his ambitions as a scholar and magician take an ominous turn. Having sold his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, can Faustus repent and be saved-or is it too late? This play, critically acclaimed as Christopher Marlowe's greatest work, boldly and imaginatively explores the age-old question: "What profits a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul?" Marlowe gives life to this concept in Faustus-a single man in whom Heaven and Hell do battle. Using both broad humor and deadly seriousness in this daring work, Marlowe addresses the essence of the human soul. Investigating the liability of knowledge, the interplay of free will and fate, and the perversion of power, Faustus's story has as much relevance to us today as it did to audiences in the sixteenth century.
_
Fast Ships, Black Sails by Ann VanderMeer
Global 9/10 Topic: Age of Exploration
Format: Short Stories Collection
Pages: 272
Summary: While this may not be the first pirate story anthology, Fast Ships, Black Sails doesn't hold back, with its captivating cover featuring a classic pirate standing proud at the prow of his ship, while small glowing-eye dragons fly around, a tiny dragon skeleton sits on his shoulder, and in the cloudy distance is what appears to be a ghost pirate ship. This collection edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer features a combination of classic swashbuckling pirate tales, as well as fascinating stories of the fantastic from authors like Conrad Williams, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear, and many more.
In the opening story, "Boojum" from Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette - possibly the best in the collection - we are in space, and the mighty spaceships are living entities that grow and change and have mouths; they are biomechanical. The authors do an excellent job of creating an interesting world that leaves the reader wanting more. In Naomi Novik's -- author of the successful Temeraire series - "Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake," the daughter of a very important noble is kidnapped by pirates and thought murdered, but Araminta is a special woman with some unique powers allowing her to outwit the pirates who have taken her hostage. In Michael Moorcock's too short story "Ironface," there are pirates in space and Ironface is the most feared in the solar system, who makes the trip to Venus to accept the expensive bribe that he collects each decade, then his ship, Pain, floats back out into the dark realms of space.
Fast Ships, Black Sails has the perfect pirate story for any reader, as it presents both the classic and the unusual stories of privateers and buccaneers sailing the high seas, as well as the dark matter clouds of the cosmos. (From Amazon.com)
Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin
Global 9/10 Topic: The Enlightenment
Format: Collection of Proverbs
Pages: 144
Summary: Benjamin Franklin’s classic book is full of timeless, thought-provoking insights that are as valuable today as they were over two centuries ago. With more than 700 pithy proverbs, Franklin lays out the rules everyone should live by and offers advice on such subjects as money, friendship, marriage, ethics, and human nature. They range from the famous “A penny saved is a penny earned” to the lesser-known but equally practical “When the wine enters, out goes the truth.” Other truisms like “Fish and visitors stink after three days” combine sharp wit with wisdom. Paul Volcker’s new introduction offers a fascinating perspective on Franklin’s beloved work.
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Global 9/10 Topic: The French Revolution
Format: Novel
Pages: 270
Summary: The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic novel, though it is hard to categorize. It is part romance, part adventure, part spy thriller, and part superhero fiction. All of these elements went into the pot and the resulting stew is extremely entertaining.
The book follows the adventures of Sir Percy Blakeney as he seeks to help French aristocrats escape the guillotine during the French Revolution. Since official English policy forbids this, Blakeney adopts a masked identity as the Scarlet Pimpernel to remain anonymous. The French, of course, detest this interference in their affairs and set out to trap and kill the Pimpernel at all costs. As part of his effort to deflect suspicion from himself, he plays the fool in every day life and he does it well. His own wife considers him a useless fop... and that's where the story really gets interesting. (From Amazon.com)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Global 9/10 Topic: Industrialization
Format: Novel
Pages: 480
The repeated sufferings of Jurgis and his family are akin to an overwhelming symphony of sorrowful songs. As his family is driven deeper into debt, his body worn down, and his life's zeal and love slowly strangled, Jurgis' desperation becomes palpable, and if you can't sympathize with his feelings at the loss of his family's home--a structure they worked so hard for--check your pulse. You might be dead.
The book contains some of the most horrific depictions in all of literature, including a mercifully oblique reference to a child's death by being eaten alive by rats. Although the novel focuses on Jurgis primarily, it is the children--the laboring little people--who elicit the most sympathy in this reader's view. Struggling to support their family, escaping extremely dangerous situations (one little girl is nearly dragged into an alley and raped), sleeping on the street, and begging desperately for food--the appalling conditions being visited upon children as described in "The Jungle" still have the power to arouse strong anger and outrage, over a century after its initial publication.
One of the greatest social novels ever written, "The Jungle" is a moving tribute to the millions of immigrants who did come here legally, who did find jobs, who were ready to work for their slice of the American Dream, and who survived (barely) despite being swindled, stolen from, lied to, oppressed, turned out, ignored, and abused, almost from the very first step they took into the United States. The recent punditry over immigration that has dominated the national debate should serve as a reminder of the timelessness exhibited in Upton Sinclair's seminal masterpiece. (From Amazon.com)
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Global 9/10 Topic: WWII/Human Rights
Format: Graphic Novel
Pages: 160
Summary: Told with chilling realism in an unusual comic-book format, this is more than a tale of surviving the Holocaust. Spiegelman relates the effect of those events on the survivors' later years and upon the lives of the following generation. Each scene opens at the elder Spiegelman's home in Rego Park, N.Y. Art, who was born after the war, is visiting his father, Vladek, to record his experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Nazis, portrayed as cats, gradually introduce increasingly repressive measures, until the Jews, drawn as mice, are systematically hunted and herded toward the Final Solution. Vladek saves himself and his wife by a combination of luck and wits, all the time enduring the torment of hunted outcast. The other theme of this book is Art's troubled adjustment to life as he, too, bears the burden of his parents' experiences. This is a complex book. It relates events which young adults, as the future architects of society, must confront, and their interest is sure to be caught by the skillful graphics and suspenseful unfolding of the story. (From Amazon.com)
__
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Global 9/10 Topic: Human Rights
Format: Graphic Novel
Pages: 160
Summary: Adult/High School-Marji tells of her life in Iran from the age of 10, when the Islamic revolution of 1979 reintroduced a religious state, through the age of 14 when the Iran-Iraq war forced her parents to send her to Europe for safety. This story, told in graphic format with simple, but expressive, black-and-white illustrations, combines the normal rebelliousness of an intelligent adolescent with the horrors of war and totalitarianism. Marji's parents, especially her freethinking mother, modeled a strong belief in freedom and equality, while her French education gave her a strong faith in God. Her Marxist-inclined family initially favored the overthrow of the Shah, but soon realized that the new regime was more restrictive and unfair than the last. The girl's independence, which made her parents both proud and fearful, caused them to send her to Austria. With bold lines and deceptively uncomplicated scenes, Satrapi conveys her story. From it, teens will learn much of the history of this important area and will identify with young Marji and her friends. This is a graphic novel of immense power and importance for Westerners of all ages. (From Amazon.com)